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Post by jamesd on Aug 19, 2011 18:49:06 GMT -8
How often do gynandromorphs naturally occur... 1 in every 1,000?
I would also like to know if gynandromorphs are able to fly. Some with tiny wings on one side with huge wings on the other, appear as if they can't fly. Surely their flight must be affected.
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Post by simosg on Aug 19, 2011 22:46:29 GMT -8
Specimens with large damages at the wings can fly, so gynandromorphs should be able too.
Hannes
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Post by nomihoudai on Aug 20, 2011 1:16:40 GMT -8
In Saturniidae where the female is twice as large problems in flying might occur very well, in butterflies I would guess not.
I think gynandromorphs are more common than some people around here think, I mean how rare can they really be when there is an add for one nearly every week and some people of us actually get one in the field. The problem with gynandromorphs is that just a small portion of Lepidoptera is sexual dimorphic to a degree that you can spot it easily from far away, we don't know how many gynandromorphs some people here might actually already have in their collections like Noctuids that all look pretty much the same.
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Post by jackblack on Aug 22, 2011 2:37:54 GMT -8
Having commercially bred butterflies for many years I think it is well above one in a 1,000 is a gynandromorph.Maybe more like one in 10,000.
Out of the many of thousands of butterflies I have bred only two Gynandromorphs emerged , one Hypolimnas bolina and one Papilio aegeus intersex form beatrix one quarter male three quarter female , both could fly very well.
I also recently found a gynandro stick insect it was very intersting in the fact it was trying to mate with a female , the male half of the brain was telling it to mate with the female but the half and half body was not allowing it to physically mate , a lost cause for a species .
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Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 22, 2011 7:29:25 GMT -8
True bilateral gynandromorphs, as opposed to mosaics, are extremely rare in nature - probably nearer one in a million than one in 10,000. In over 30 years of collecting butterflies in the field (I don't count my childhood or teenage years) I have never seen a single specimen myself. I have also reared thousands of Papilionidae, and the nearest to a gynandromorph I have ever produced was the odd specimen that appeared to have a few small patches of scales of the opposite sex, and I'm not even sure if that was not just an asexual aberration rather than true gynandromorphism where the cells involved have actually changed sex.
Adam.
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Post by nomihoudai on Aug 22, 2011 8:57:28 GMT -8
I think it also depends on the species, family. Maybe Papilionidae is a bad example but Appias nero for example you have a whole page of gynandromorphs in Tsukada'S book "Butterflies of the South East Asian Islands" (which of course has to do with the pronounced sexual dimorphism, they are easy to spot).
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Post by wollastoni on Aug 22, 2011 22:26:34 GMT -8
Let say gynandromorph are very common ... in Alex's collection ! ;-)
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Post by jamesd on Aug 23, 2011 3:06:41 GMT -8
Thanks for the replies everyone.
It seems that the abundance... varies. Yes, many gynandromorphs probably do go unoticed where genders are similar. Jackblack, there is an image of a Papilio aegeus bilateral gynandromorph somewhere on the internet. Interesting.
I caught, and still have a Pieris rapae, where the left front-wing has an odd shape to it, though probably just an aberration or perhaps damage.
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